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Urban Agriculture
Urban Agriculture
Website Video.movOnline Resources Useful for Agriculture Teachers:
Online Resources Useful for Agriculture Teachers:
National Association of Agricultural Educators: This is an amazing website full of lesson plans and materials developed by other ag teachers. It is kind of like Teachers Pay Teachers but it is free.
One Less Thing: This website hosts a huge amount of ag teacher related content including handouts, lessons, and entire curricula. Almost nothing here is free but it is all of high quality (from my experience):
National Agriculture in the Classroom: This is a website created by a few major ag companies to provide teachers with resources. Good stuff but somewhat limited in scope.
USDA Ag Teacher Resources: It is useful to keep up to date with the USDA and this website has lesson and project ideas that have students interacting with the USDA website and programming.
Ag Day: Ag Day is in March every year and this website has resources for ag teachers and non-ag teachers to celebrate the day. This is very useful if you are partnering with non-CTE teachers.
My Top 5 Best Practices:
My Top 5 Best Practices:
1. Mastery Learning: This is not just a best practice, it is a teaching and personal philosophy that pervades my classroom. If students are not learning for mastery then why are they in the room? It also allows students to learn at a pace they are comfortable with and to never give themselves the excuse that they have failed. There is always another opportunity to do the learning and earn the grade.
2. Project Based Learning: PBL is how I center much of my instruction. Want to learn about food safety? Time to make and can some jam. Want to learn about different qualities of wood? Time to build a toolbox in our wood shop. Need to understand soil structure? Let’s take a look a garden bed after we cut into it. Projects give students purpose and provide them authentic opportunities to showcase their knowledge.
3. Teams: Students need to be able to work in teams and, in my class, we model why and how to do this. Teams rotate members every 4 weeks so that everyone in the class works with everyone else at least once per semester. And every week, each team is led by a new Field Chief who works to ensure on-task behavior. Teams are awarded bonus points for working well but no one’s grade is dependent on how well other students function.
4. Differentiation: One of the great strengths of CTE instruction is that it respects that students come to the classroom with different ability levels and that everyone is able to advance their education when given proper instruction in a supportive environment. As such, I have found that differentiation of academic and vocational tasks is a critical element of my success in the classroom. I work to provide differentiated instructional materials for students whose IEPs or 504 Plans require them and I also extend this to students who are not identified as special education students but who I can see would benefit from this service. I also seek to differentiate to my more academically advanced students by providing them with more challenging materials so that their personal growth can be maximized.
5. Family Outreach: I will only see my students about 2.5 hours per day. The rest of their day is spent in school and at home. In a program like mine where I am constantly working to launch students into their best post-high school option, it is essential that I involve the parents in these decisions. Parents know what is best for their child and they have had long-held beliefs about their child’s future. These beliefs should be honored and I attempt to do that by keeping my families informed as much as I can through the use of personal outreach, social media, and in-person meetings.
Working with stakeholders
Working with stakeholders
One of the unique elements of CTE instruction is that we have the opportunity to directly tie our classrooms to the real-world by involving stakeholders and student organizations into the lives of our students.
· Advisory Board: The Urban Ag program has a small (but growing) advisory board that provides us with input about the current state of the field as well as opportunities for field trips and summer jobs and internships. Since we are a new program, I have had to build this board myself from the ground up and I have found it to be a rewarding, but challenging, process. I hope to add more board members in the coming year so that I am up to a total of 6 – 7 members. Every new board member gives us additional opportunities for students.
· FFA: Our career-tech student organization is known as the FFA. Formerly known as the Future Farmers of America, FFA is now an organization that promotes the career development of many students interested in working with plants, animals, and food in some way. It is one of the nation’s oldest and largest youth organizations and has an impressive array of professional development opportunities for students. In my class, we hold general membership FFA meetings 2 times a month as well as committees meet 2 times per month. Both general membership and committee meetings are held during class time because I serve students from 3 districts and it is not feasible to hold after-school activities due to transportation difficulties. My program competes in the Nature Interpretation CDE challenge every spring and we spend a fair amount of time in class getting our team ready. This CDE work serves to reinforce one of our credential programs, the National Association for Interpretation’s Certified Interpretive Guide credential. As such, our FFA work directly serves to promote the success of my students.
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